Mozilla and Epic show-off Unreal Engine 4 running in Firefox

As the world trends toward Google's Chrome, it is easy to forget about trusty old Firefox. After all, Google's browser has more features and is arguably faster. However, while Google Chrome is based on the open-source Chromium project, it is not fully open-source. Conversely, Firefox remains open and well maintained. It is reliable and trustworthy.

However, Firefox shouldn't just be relegated to the role of stagnation -- quite the contrary. Mozilla is still pushing along and improving the speed and experience. To drive that message home, today it is revealed that the Unreal Engine 4 is running in Firefox without plugins. Wow.

Brendan Eich, CTO and SVP of Engineering at Mozilla says, "this technology has reached a point where games users can jump into via a Web link are now almost indistinguishable from ones they might have had to wait to download and install. Using Emscripten to cross-compile C and C++ into asm.js, developers can run their games at near-native speeds, so they can approach the Web as they would any other platform".

"We were blown away by what this Mozilla-pioneered technology achieved with Unreal Engine 3 on the Web, so we had no hesitation in working with Mozilla to port Unreal Engine 4. We believe the Web has a crucial part to play in the future of game development and deployment, and Mozilla has proven it is the catalyst to make this happen", said Tim Sweeney, Founder and CEO, Epic Games.

As you can see in the video below, the graphics and details are jaw-dropping. The fluidity in movement of waterfalls is amazing and the lighting effects are beautiful. Mozilla claims the engine is running at near-native speed and I believe it. What is truly amazing though is this is being done without plugins. Truly, the web can be viewed as a gaming platform.